But we also take time on this Pearl Harbor Day to pray that our nation never forgets the crucial importance of comprehensive preparedness. For a thorough preparedness requires military strength, savvy and resolve. Of that there is (or, until the administration of Barack Obama, was) a unified understanding.
But it also requires a humility of our nation's people before Almighty God, a humility that requires us to live according to His Word.
Alas, on both counts, there is cause for very deep worry in modern America.
On this solemn anniversary, I'd like to recommend to visitors of Vital Signs Blog a fascinating and important book, Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath by Walter Toland (1986). Admittedly, it is a troubling, even infuriating read because Toland painstakingly documents the bonehead errors Washington made (if that's all they were) in failing to pass along to Admiral Husband Kimmel and Lt. General Walter Short the latest and best intelligence information concerning the expected Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But it's important to know the truth and to pledge oneself to learn from its crucial lessons.
I'm also recommending you check out a couple of previous Vital Signs posts relevant to this day. The first post deals with Elvis Presley's concert to help build the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. The concert was in March of 1961, his first after being discharged from the U.S. Army.
And next, I encourage you to read A Different Christmas Poem by Michael Parks, written on Pearl Harbor Day in 2000. The compelling poem was sent along to me in 2008 by a dear friend and pro-life colleague, Dr. Greg Gardner in Birmingham, England.
